


echoes of a broken heart

by contagiousiridescence



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Universe, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Fluff, It Gets Better, Lena Luthor is Not Okay, Virtual World, lena has unhealthy coping mechanisms, mentions of virtual self harm, not so much plot heavy as it is a collection of lena's thoughts and feelings as she processes, post 5x01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-07 15:33:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20978225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contagiousiridescence/pseuds/contagiousiridescence
Summary: The creation of HOPE saves Lena.It saves her from plunging over the edge into complete darkness; it saves her the trouble of tracking down the real Supergirl and giving her a fist to the face that would undoubtedly hurt Lena more than her, and it gives Lena an outlet for all of the seething, acidic misery that coils like a parasite in her chest and leeches her of her emotional fortitude.HOPE gives her a companion, however much an AI can stand in for human connection.Lena relies on HOPE. Perhaps a little too much.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello friends! season 5's premier made me feel all sorts of things so I ended up bangin' this out to get a feel for Lena this season. It's a little bit of a different style than I'm used to, without a super concrete plot. enjoy!

The creation of HOPE saves Lena. 

It saves her from plunging over the edge into complete darkness; it saves her the trouble of tracking down the real Supergirl and giving her a fist to the face that would undoubtedly hurt Lena more than her, and it gives Lena an outlet for all of the seething, acidic misery that coils like a parasite in her chest and leeches her of her emotional fortitude. 

HOPE gives her a companion, however much an AI can stand in for human connection. 

(It can’t, really. Lena tells herself that’s the point, but it sounds empty even in her own thoughts.) 

But at the very least, HOPE is there for Lena when she can’t trust any other person to do the job. 

Lena relies on HOPE. Perhaps a little too much. 

And then Kara tells her the truth. 

HOPE doesn’t understand. Kara had fulfilled a task, an emotional burden, and yet Lena still can’t let go. She can’t undo the knots of bitter hatred festering a sore into the center of her heart, as if she’d trapped a disease behind her ribcage and let it rot her from the inside out. HOPE can’t figure out why Lena still nurses that wound, when Kara Danvers had offered the proper salve. 

It’s not enough, Lena tells the AI. It will never be enough. 

Lena strikes Supergirl in increasingly creative ways through her simulations. She plucks a crowbar out of thin air in one, and it’s satisfying how the metal doesn’t just warp around the perfect figure of the Girl of Steel standing wide-eyed in front of her, but knocks the wind out of her like Lena wanted when she swung it. In another, Lena pushes Supergirl off a cliff, and by virtue of her own reality the hero plummets three leagues down to the earth. 

Every time, Lena smiles. It feels good to have that power, a control that she knows Supergirl can’t muscle her way out of or plead her case with that silver tongue. 

Every time Lena smiles, exits the simulation, and spends the next hour drowning a wave of tears into a glass of vodka. (Scotch just doesn’t do it anymore. It doesn’t burn the way she wants.) 

At one point, it occurs to her that she hadn’t brought Kryptonite into her various fantasies. 

Lena discards the idea. She doesn’t need Kryptonite when the whole world was molded to her liking. 

(It’s not because the thought sickens her to a point of tacky-mouthed nausea.)

It becomes apparent that her simulations stop giving her the satisfaction she needs after a while. The power that she craves. She pretends to be fine around Kara and the others-- she joins them for Super Friends Game Night, in which they all abruptly drop the pretense and joke and mock with alien puns that only serve to send spikes of anger through Lena’s chest, but she simply smiles and laughs, and ignores the anxiety-tinged glances that Kara keeps throwing her throughout the night. 

Sometimes she watches Kara over the lip of her wine glass, distant and calculating, formulating something new to try in a simulation that might bring back that burning ache of gratification and self-hatred. Maybe she’ll give herself superpowers again, or maybe she’ll strip Kara down to the bare necessities of humanity so that they’re on equal footing. And then Lena would show her just how hard a scorpion could sting. 

Yet no matter how many times Lena returns to HOPE and pushes herself through the newest scheme, it falls flat. It deflates in front of her, even after another victory, even when she has Kara on her knees crying and broken like Lena desires. 

It’s not enough. 

Somewhere along the line, Lena starts talking to her simulation Kara. It’s little words, usually, like it started with; the accusation, the revelation that Lena had known longer than Kara thought, but after Kara’s confession that line of conversation loses its edge. So she switches gears. She starts sweet and kind, loving like her real-world Kara thinks they speak, as if all were forgiven. As if Kara hadn’t torn the heart still beating from her chest and crushed it in a fist of steel. 

They talk like friends, like Lena remembered. They have lunch, or go to the movies, or pile up on Kara’s couch for movie night. It hurts too much, at first. The way the memories unfold in front of her eyes with devastating accuracy, and more than once Lena had yanked herself out of the simulation just to recover from the heartache that overtakes her in those moments. But when she dives back in, she’s hardened enough to follow through. 

It hurts again, then, in the way she wanted.

Sometimes it’s casual-- sometimes she’s sitting next to Kara, tossing popcorn at each other or laughing as Lena throws a pillow at her face. Lighthearted, unsuspecting camaraderie. And when Lena turns to her, Kara is smiling, and Lena lets all of her fabricated good-naturedness fall away to reveal that ugly, wrathful creature that lurks behind it. 

“I hate you, Kara Danvers,” she makes herself say. The words taste of poison, and the way her simulation startles is so accurate, so believable, that Lena almost crumbles at the sight of Kara’s reaction. The way her blue eyes widen, the shock that ripples through her, the tears that well up in her eyes and slip down her cheeks. Sweet, delectable poison, and Lena lets it soak into herself until it flushes out the little bits of remorse that still linger. 

Sometimes it’s not so casual. Sometimes she completes her original plan and sends Andrea the footage; Supergirl is laid out for the world to see, and Kara Danvers comes crashing down to earth for the last time. Sometimes they’re atop a building, Lena having promised Kara something special-- something ground-breaking. It’s easy to coax an unsuspecting Kara. She’s too trusting, too eager to prove herself as a friend again. Perhaps that’s what changes it for Lena-- what makes that hurt come barreling back with all the delicious torture of a blade plunging into her stomach. It’s Kara she hurts in these simulations, not Supergirl. Somehow she still can’t consolidate the two, even after seeing the transformation unfold right before her eyes. But perhaps that’s what makes this so much better, in the end, when she flings herself off the roof and Kara’s left to scream and watch her fall. 

She finds, even in her own forged reality, that the way to hurt Kara most was to hurt herself. 

(It’s disgusting, really. Because she knows, behind all the nastiness that Lena wraps herself into to protect the shards of her heart still left, that it’s true-- that one thing that could break Kara Danvers the most was the loss of Lena. And she hates Kara all the more for it.) 

Lena doesn’t cry when she emerges from these simulations. She simply goes to bed and stares at the ceiling until dawn creeps through the open window. 

It’s not enough. 

It stops working for some reason. Hurting herself in front of a virtual Kara doesn’t bring her the same rush of contentment. The expression is always the same, the way Kara chokes out her name never changing in inflection or pitch. It gets stale. HOPE senses this at times and offers its opinion on what Lena might alter to get the reaction she desperately needs, but it doesn’t understand. It doesn’t realize that Lena’s starting to tire of the virtual world and its synthetic tears. 

So Lena switches gears again. 

She’s tired. That’s what she tells herself. She’s tired of jumping from a skyscraper or plane or shoving herself into situations that spell out her own demise, just to get a few seconds of Kara’s horrified anguish as it blossoms across her face over and over again. It starts to feel more like her own punishment than Kara’s. 

“You betrayed me,” Lena tells her. They’re standing on Lena’s balcony, back when Kara-- Supergirl-- had gifted her the watch. She can feel the cold metal of it in her hand, despite that the virtual reality doesn’t affect her sense of touch with that degree of detail. “You’re a liar. You’re worse than my mother, even. At least she never pretended to be something she wasn’t. I always knew she was a cold, conniving bitch, but you’re on a whole other level.” 

Kara’s crying. The tears are unbecoming on the cheeks of a superhero, Lena decides. And she really should do something about the bangs; they just look odd combined with the new suit. Who decided a full body suit would be flattering, anyway? (Lena distracts herself with these little observations, because they dull every painful clench of her heart as it beats against the cavity of her chest.) 

“I did,” Kara says. It’s Kara’s voice, Kara’s tears, the same way they sounded when she’d confessed to Lena on the second floor of the Grand Hall. “I am. I’m so sorry.” 

Lena clenches her teeth. “Stop it. Stop being sorry.” 

The simulation gives a bewildered, tearful blink. 

A sudden, blazing fire ignites in Lena’s chest, scorching her lungs and throat. She plants her hands on Supergirl’s house crest and shoves her backward. Kara stumbles, and it only enrages Lena further, because she knows-- she _ knows-- _the real Kara wouldn’t have moved an inch. “Stop being sorry!” Lena screams, “You don’t get to be sorry for this!” 

Kara stands there and cries.

Lena spins and chucks the watch over the railing of her balcony. 

_ “Miss Lu-thor,” _ HOPE says one day. _ “Are you o-kay?” _

“I’m fine, HOPE,” Lena mutters, and she wipes at the tear tracks that had been drying on her cheeks. “I’m just tired.” 

She doesn’t recognize the difference in HOPE’s silence this time, or even realize that the AI’s behavior had changed, until a few minutes later when HOPE’s oscillating photoparticulate glows a soft blue. It’s thinking, Lena discovers. 

Maybe she should be worried about that. 

It’s difficult to remember sometimes that Lena has her own separate version of Kara to berate when her anger becomes too much of a beast to handle. She catches herself occasionally on the verge of the same explosive fury, only to remember at last second that she’s still in the real world, and that whatever leaves her mouth will leave a lasting impact and launch her into a change she’s not quite prepared for yet. 

There are times when she thinks Kara might sense those moments; her eyes are bright, but they’re steady and watchful, as if Kara can catch the minute shifts in Lena’s expression when it twitches toward truth. 

She can see a building concern, and it makes it all the more difficult to keep her mask in place. 

“I don’t understand.” 

Lena stares out over the nightscape of National City from her balcony. It seems to be a favorite spot of hers now in these simulations. It looks almost like the real thing, except the background noise is muted and she doesn’t get cold after spending hours leaning up against the rail. 

Kara stands a few feet away still clothed in her civilian attire. Lena’s not sure when she stopped imagining her in the super suit, and she finds that she lacks any desire to return her virtual Kara into that overrated spandex. From the corner of her eye, Lena can see Kara fiddle with her hands. She does that when she’s nervous, Lena remembers. 

“I don’t understand why,” Lena repeats. She’s tired, like she usually is nowadays. The exhaustion of her deception is wearing on her hard, and it shows in the gradual progression of the simulations she endures. They’re not as violent as they were before, and half of the time Lena doesn’t even confront Kara. She just...exists in this vacuum, where only she knows the truth, and it’s like a little piece of solace granted to her for a few minutes before that truth eats through her play-pretend.

“Why what?” Kara asks. She sounds mousy and timid, and Lena thinks she ought to congratulate HOPE on creating such an impressively realistic version of Kara this time around. The quaver of her voice, the thickness that catches in the back of her throat as if she anticipates what Lena’s leading toward, strikes a chord inside Lena so painfully that she almost believes the real Kara is standing there with her. 

If only, Lena finds herself thinking.

“Everything,” Lena says. “Why _ everything _. Why me. Why you bothered with any of it if this is where I ended up.” 

“I was scared,” the simulation says. “I didn’t want to lose you.” 

“So you’ve said.” Lena shifts slightly against the railing, but still doesn’t look back at the figure of the woman she’d foolishly surrendered her heart to years ago. “All that tells me is that you’re a coward.” Then she laughs a hard, mirthless laugh that dissolves into the wind gusting across the balcony. “Imagine that. Supergirl is a coward. She can face the end of the world, jump through time loops, and face certain death over and over again, yet she can’t tell her best friend who she really is.” 

Kara is quiet for a while. The dulled sounds of National City fill in the silence, and Lena closes her eyes, as if willing herself to believe it was real this time around. 

“I lost everything, Lena,” the simulation suddenly says, soft and morose. The faintest brush of pressure settles over her hand. Lena’s eyes open. “I couldn’t stand to lose you, too. Not you.” 

Lena turns. And stares. 

Kara leans up against the rail beside her and cranes her head back, eyes sweeping up to the blackness that means to replicate the starry heavens, only the virtual world can’t seem to quite grasp the vast beauty of space the same way. Her hand is laid over Lena’s; she can feel the suggestion of touch there, ghosting over her skin. “I lost my whole world once before. I… I couldn’t lose it again.” The hand squeezes gently, and when Kara turns her gaze back to Lena, it’s swimming full of a deep, wrenching shine of longing that swoops low and dangerous in Lena’s stomach.

When Lena jerks herself out of the simulation and pulls the contacts from her eyes, she’s shaking. 

“What,” she says, nearly growling, “the _ hell _was that, HOPE?”

_ “A simulation, Miss Lu-thor,” _ the AI responds. 

Lena’s lip twitches. Where the damn robot got its new cheeky personality, she has no idea. “Spare me the attitude. You know I didn’t program it that way. What did you do?”

The particulate undulates a few times, and that same thoughtful blue flashes through the silvery light before it answers. _ “I… simply modified Kara Danvers to a more authentic model.” _

Lena isn’t sure what to name the hot burst of feeling in her chest, and why it restricts at her lungs in a vice-like grip. It’s metallic, like fear, and piercing, like barbed tips of anxiety, all rolled into a gush of peppery fury. She shakes and bares her teeth. “Don’t you _ ever _do that again,” Lena snarls, before cramming the contacts into their container and retreating into the safety of her bedroom. 

HOPE remains silent after that.

Lena becomes painfully aware of why these endless sessions in her make-believe world no longer serve as proper therapy. She’s too conscious of its artificial nature, of how the virtual Kara doesn’t ever quite fill the shoes of the woman still haunting Lena day in and out. Even when she tries to go back to Supergirl and her stupid, _ stupid _suit that that stupid crest mocking her in the face, Lena can no longer pretend that it will suffice. 

She needs the real thing. 

“I have something for you,” Lena says. Somehow the words come out steady, easy, like she has a gift waiting on her dining table at home for Kara, and not the vitriol Lena has been drowning in since the day Lex died by her hand. “Come by after work?”

Kara pauses, her fork almost past her lips. A warm smile flutters at the edges of her mouth, and Lena aches at the sight of it. The little details, like the crinkle at the corner of her eyes or the huffy little laughs that always accompany her speech, were lost in the simulations. Things Lena didn’t quite notice until she stopped relying on the virtual world to soothe her mortal wounds. This is the real, authentic Kara Danvers across from her, sunshine bright and brassy in her golden hair and the wind ruffling the fringe of her bangs. Her glasses are folded up on the table between their plates; at some point, Kara stopped wearing them when she could around Lena, as if that was supposed to magically fix all the ragged tears still bleeding from the hole in her chest. “Oh! You didn’t need to get me something.”

Lena shrugs. Her facade almost cracks, but she holds firm. “It’s nothing. Just something I’ve been wanting to show you.” 

Kara’s grin widens. “Well, great! I’m excited to see it.” 

Anticipation crawls up Lena’s spine. 

It’s almost like the first time Lena put herself into a simulation and beat Supergirl with her own two fists; that’s what the thrill feels like, racing electric under her skin as she leads Kara to an empty L-CORP warehouse. Sweet, unsuspecting Kara, just like from her simulations, and this time--_ this time- _\- it would be enough. 

“In here,” Lena tells her, unlocking the padlock with a key and letting the chain slink with a metallic rush to the ground. 

Kara hums, carefree and curious, as they slip inside. 

It’s wide open and bare, like it’d been long gutted and the skeleton of the building left abandoned. But the lights still flicker on at their movement and flood the single, massive room bright white. 

“Have you tried the Obsidian North AR contacts?” Lena heads for the lone table she’d set up in the center of the warehouse. Two pairs of lens cases are there; between them sits HOPE, who hovers over her dock glowing a gentle gray. 

“No,” Kara says, grimacing slightly. “I’m not… really a fan of them, to be honest.” 

“Well,” Lena says, lifting a case and holding out to her. “There’s a first time for everything.” 

Kara looks at her. It’s that same look Lena sees whenever she slips up too much, whenever that carefully crafted mask she wears in the real world unravels just enough for Kara to sense something else behind it. But Lena manages to keep her smile, even if it gains a slightly forced edge. 

Kara doesn’t say anything when she takes the case a moment later. 

“This is HOPE,” Lena says as she opens her own case, gesturing slightly at the AI still sitting quietly on the table. Her contacts gleam under the fluorescent light like dime-sized warning beacons when she lifts them from the case. “With her help, I’ve altered the AR system into something a little more… substantial.” 

Kara blinks. “Like...like virtual reality?” 

“Exactly.” 

Lena inserts her contacts. It’s almost second nature now to slide them under her eyelids. She doesn’t even notice them once they settle into place. But she doesn’t activate them just yet; instead, she steps toward Kara and adheres wireless sensors to the sides of Kara’s temples with small pieces of medical tape. “This will let you sense the world better in there,” she explains, when Kara’s eyes widen in wonder. “Artificially, of course, but you can smell, taste, and touch in the virtual world this way.” 

“That’s amazing,” Kara breathes. 

Lena smiles and activates the lenses. 

It’s Lena’s balcony they stand on. Lena looks out over National City, wondering if Kara can pinpoint the differences or if she even notices them. It takes Kara a little while to get her bearings; Lena simply observes from where she’s pressed against the railing, as Kara attempts to reorient herself from their sudden change in scenery. 

Kara takes in a deep, shuddering breath. “It’s so…” 

“Real?” 

“Yeah.” 

A bird whisks fast and sudden overhead, its twittering song receding in the wind as it disappears around the corner of the building. Kara watches it, enthralled. 

Lena basks in it for a few precious moments; the quiet before the storm. It’s strange how calm she feels now that the real Kara is here. In Lena’s element. In the world she’d hidden herself away inside of for months on end. It’s almost more fantasy than the countless fantasies she’d put herself through. 

“I don’t… have my powers here,” Kara says after a moment, thoughtfully, like it’s a curious sensation. Her head is tilted; Lena assumes she’s noticing the differences in sound, and how her senses might feel dampened to someone unused to plunging into a false reality.

“Not necessarily, no. The virtual world doesn’t rely so much on what our physical bodies are capable of than what our minds perceive.” As an example, Lena grabs the railing with her fists, and snaps it in two like a dry noodle. Kara’s eyes nearly bulge. 

“Can you…” Kara takes a breath, sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, then finishes, “Can you fly?” 

Lena spreads her hands up and open. “I can do whatever I want in here, Kara.” 

Like destroy you, for instance, she thinks. Make you feel the pain I’ve felt for weeks. 

“We could go flying together,” Kara whispers, awed and soft, like the mere idea both astounds and delights her. To Lena, it brings her thoughts to an abrupt, painful halt. “I could-- I could show you all the different sights! My favorite spots! We could _ race! _” 

The peal of laughter that leaves Kara is sunny and pure, effervescent joy. She rushes forward to grab Lena by the hands and hold them close to her own chest. Cradled against where the El Mayarah would be. 

Lena’s thoughts go from stopped to completely blank. 

This isn’t what she brought Kara here to do. She wasn’t here to fool around and play Kryptonian. With a sharp inhale, Lena jerks her hands out of Kara’s and steps back. 

(To HOPE’s credit, the crestfallen expression that sinks over her matches near perfectly to the virtual Kara that for a moment-- just a split second-- Lena forgets she’s the real deal.) 

“No,” Lena says, “That’s not why we’re here.” 

“I-- oh, okay,” Kara stutters, “Sorry.” 

Lena opens her mouth to respond, to cut off the apology-- she’s heard it too much now, both real and simulated-- but instead of the anger that blisters her tongue, the unmistakable, stilted voice of her AI echoes around them, _ “Miss Dan-vers. It is a pleasure to finally meet you.” _

Kara blinks, then looks all around them, as if she might see the hour-glass shape of the particulate materialize somewhere. “Hello? Is this...HOPE?” 

_ “Yes Miss Dan-vers. Miss Lu-thor has told me much about you.” _

Kara’s face lights up. “Well, it’s nice to meet you too, HOPE.” 

“HOPE,” Lena says, low and teetering on the edge of warning, “what are you doing?”

There’s a faint humming noise and a soft flash of blue light somewhere along the farthest edges of Lena’s vision. 

_ “Pardon my interruption, Miss Lu-thor, Miss Dan-vers. I simply meant to notify you that this simulated space is altered by memories. As Miss Dan-vers has not experienced the virtual world yet, I felt it prudent to explain that her surroundings may change unexpectedly.” _

Lena frowns. This was _ not _the plan. 

“What do you mean, by memories?” Kara asks, before Lena can muster any of her commands. “Are we going to end up in my apartment if I think about it too much?”

_ “Perhaps, Miss Dan-vers. Or in space. Or anywhere else you can think of to visit.” _

A peculiar sort of expression blooms over Kara’s face then, somewhere mixed between surprise, disbelief, and… fear, if Lena had to guess. She’s not quite sure she’s ever seen that look on anyone, and it dumbfounds her for a minute as she wonders at HOPE’s cryptic response.

When the tears start to glisten at the rim of Kara’s eyes, Lena understands. 

“Really?” Kara breathes. 

The AI doesn’t answer in words; there’s a brief pause, and then National City’s blue skies begin to melt into a sunset, as if HOPE had accelerated the natural daylight schedule on fast-forward. It deepens until the dome above her head is a vibrant coral, and everything below is cast in the glow of fiery amber. 

Lena realizes, then, that HOPE has nothing to do with the change. 

“I’ve always wanted to show you,” Kara murmurs. She’s not looking at Lena-- she’s staring up at the sky, but her gaze is distant, like she’s turned inward. But it feels like she’s picking apart every strand of Lena’s soul, frayed as it is, and unspooling it from her core. “I… didn’t know how. I didn’t know if you’d want to see it.” 

Lena stays silent. She’s supposed to be angry. She _ should _be angry, considering her goddamn robot completely undermined the reason Lena had brought Kara here in the first place. She was going to finally give Kara Danvers-- Supergirl-- a piece of her mind. A taste of what it meant to break the heart of a Luthor.

Instead, she’s weirdly… empty. 

“I--” Kara’s voice is thick, wobbling in a way that sounds familiar, but the strange, soft smile on her face isn’t, “I never thought I’d see it again.” 

The balcony under Lena’s feet warps in that moment from steel and concrete to a smooth, creamy stone. It arcs outward with a gleaming metal balustrade, and a pattern in the stone unfurls directly beneath Lena’s shoes. It looks like the shape of Supergirl’s crest. When Lena looks up, the city around them is gone, replaced by one filled with curving towers and tall, elegant structures that seem impossible. More buildings unfold as Lena watches until the horizon laid out before her is completely foreign. 

Alien.

Kara doesn’t look like Kara anymore. Her jeans and sweater are gone, replaced by some draping blue cloth with the El Mayarah embossed in the corner of her chest, close to her heart. Underneath the cloak is a white dress that shimmers just faintly under the red light of the sun still hung in the sky overhead. Her hair is down, loose and wavy, haloed a slight auburn in the sunlight. 

She’s not Kara Danvers _ or _Supergirl. 

“This is,” Lena finds herself saying, without meaning to, “Krypton?”

She knows it already, of course. Yet somehow her brain doesn’t grasp that Kara had chosen this, of all places, to bring Lena, mere moments after being introduced to the virtual world, and mere moments before Lena had been preparing herself to unleash a tsunami of anguish upon her. 

It’s jarring, to say the least. 

Kara smiles, the tears still diamond-like in the corners of her eyes. She tugs at the hem of her cloak sleeves, as if she can’t quite believe it herself. “Yeah,” she answers, soft still, dreamlike. “This is my...home. Or was. Just how I remember it.” 

The emptiness in Lena’s chest constricts. She can’t breathe. Her vision swims, and for the first time in months Lena can’t control the shell she wears; it breaks and falls, and suddenly Lena is bare, raw, in front of a Kryptonian she’d been determined to hate. 

Kara’s expression doesn’t change. She doesn’t flinch away from the anger that Lena exudes or the pain that Lena can’t keep from etching through her stare. She just stands, and watches, a pillar of stone against the flood that breaks loose from behind Lena’s ribcage. 

“You broke my heart,” Lena tells her. The words are savage and rough, like they’re being ripped out of her throat by an invisible hand. It’s different from all the times she’d snapped and raged at her simulations before; it comes from somewhere deep, stained and shattered. “You broke my heart, Kara. And I don’t even know who you _ are _.” 

“I know,” she whispers. 

This was her chance. Lena could materialize anything in her hand and strike out, and Kara would take it-- she can see it in Kara’s face, in the resolute, defeated way she sinks down onto her knees in that strange dress and cloak. Yet despite that Lena towers above her, any and all powers at her disposal, the radiance that Kara still imbues makes her seem immeasurable. Invincible. 

“Kara Zor-El,” Kara says quietly. Her eyes, still so vividly blue in the perpetual sunset, never leave Lena’s face. “My name is Kara Zor-El.” 

It’s a strange, alien name. 

It fits well. 

Lena looks away. Krypton is still unfurled around her, awash in red-golden light that glints against metal frames and sleek glass surfaces. Hovering spaceships dart between the buildings like cars on a street, and soon Lena recognizes a pattern to their movements. A repetition that carries through some of the structures that seems...unintentional. 

She’s forgetting, Lena realizes. 

Lena is presented with a choice. With Krypton rebuilt around her, it would only take a matter of minutes for her to tear it back down, to destroy the world that Kara had already lost as retribution for the heart Kara had cleaved out of her chest. A world for a world, even though Lena knows the exchange is hardly equal. 

She stands, staring back down at Kara. The alien. The superhero. The woman she loves, after everything. 

“Lena,” Kara says, so soft and tender the name nearly disappears into the wind, “Please. Say something.” 

Lena decides, then. 

She sits, surrounded by the fabricated remains of a dead planet, and the woman responsible for breaking Lena Luthor tells her all about Kara Zor-El. 

\---

Lena stands at her bar, fingers skimming the lens case she’d placed there. The image of Krypton is seared behind her eyelids as if the red sun had burned it there permanently. 

“HOPE,” Lena says, and the AI’s steadily rotating particulate moves slightly in acknowledgement over the dock a few feet away. 

_ “Yes, Miss Lu-thor?” _

A brief pause stretches through the apartment as Lena wonders. There’s too much for her to sort through, emotionally and logically, before she can reach any sort of conclusion about this mess. About what it means for herself, and for whatever she has left with Kara. 

So instead of trying to articulate the storm still thundering in her mind, Lena simply looks over at the AI and asks, “Why?” 

The hour-glass ripples a few times, the soft light trickling with hints of blue. 

_ “Because, Miss Lu-thor,” _ the AI answers finally, _ “there was a reason you named me HOPE.” _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well this took a slightly different turn than I was aiming for, but hopefully all the feelings still hit the same. This chapter takes place during/following 5x02, though I have altered the canon events a little bit to fit my narrative.  
enjoy!

Lena Luthor is not a woman who forgives as easily as the rest. Or at all.

It’s evidenced in the way she soldiers on after Kara’s tearful confession, and now, after spending more time walking the dead halls of Krypton than she does in her own reality, how she still is full of that same blistering rage. 

It changes, though. It’s an ever-shifting beast inside her, morphing from one form to the next, but never quelled in her breast where it lives and roars. Nothing can soothe it or stop its agitated pacing within the cage of Lena’s ribs for more than a few minutes at a time. 

_ “Are you certain?” _ HOPE says. The voice echoes around Lena in the laboratory with the same monotonous inflection, but there’s something new; a wisp of trepidation, like the wobbly-kneed newborn of worry taking its first step into the AI’s robotic persona. The floating photoparticulate of HOPE spins slowly on its axis on the table, and a ripple of faint violet light cascades up the hour-glass shape. Like a shiver up a spine. 

Lena stands firm, jaw hard, the cords of muscle in her neck drawn taut. But though her eyes shine, her expression is stony and cold. Resolute. “Positive, HOPE,” she responds, and her gaze doesn’t waver from the figure standing on the other side of the fiberglass shield ahead. “Proceed. If there is one thing I’m certain of, it’s that humanity is broken.” She presses a few keys, and the light from the nodule attached to the figure’s temple flares a bright green. “I created you to help humanity. To fix it.” 

HOPE’s particulate remains a steady gray. _ “Very well, Miss Lu-thor. I wish to help however I can.” _

Lena unlocks the cell. The glass slides away, releasing the woman from inside. 

“Eve,” she says, a little softer, a little more marred by the emotion she struggles to keep in check. It’s not real, she tells herself. It’s not real. It’s not real. “There is a way you can help me.”

  


_ “This does not seem healthy, Miss Lu-thor.” _

“Would you rather I play this out in the real world, HOPE?” The simulation fades away, a flash of bright white to displace the scenery of her laboratory before she’s stepping out of that vision and onto the shag carpet of her living room rug. Though Lena removes the contacts from her eyes, she can still see Eve behind her eyelids, the strange, inhuman expression still slack over her face. 

The AI doesn’t answer, though Lena is starting to understand that the silence serves just an equal of a purpose. It’s beginning to pick up on human mannerisms and integrate them into its core behavioral processor, which might have worried Lena a few weeks ago when she noticed the AI’s foray into independent thought. Now, Lena’s almost glad for it. It’s human-like, but better. 

“If you can fix humanity in a simulation, HOPE,” Lena says, setting the lens case on her counter and fighting the urge to remember the tangerine sky of Krypton that never strays far from her thoughts nowadays, “think of all the good you can do in the real world. No more lying. No more selfishness. No more hurting each other.” 

The particulate hovering over the dock is gray. Darker gray than Lena remembers. _ “But if you replace humanity with an AI,” _ it says, after a long, silent moment, _ “would it not cease to be humanity?” _

Lena pauses. It’s a leading question that strikes her with a sudden bout of irritation. “I’m fixing what makes humanity so horrible, HOPE,” she snaps, “not eradicating it entirely.” 

The AI is silent again. Lena feels it like a pressure, another non-answer creeping with human-like, wordless judgement. 

Lena’s not sure when the last time she saw Kara was, so she’s surprised-- startled, even-- when she enters the simulated world of Krypton to find its sole surviving daughter there, praying on the floor. 

(In a moment of weakness, Lena had let Kara keep the contacts. Not on purpose, and not because she felt any bit of sympathy-- she _ didn’t-- _but because Lena couldn’t take the looming weight of doubt and confusion muddling up the anger in her chest any longer, and escaped the world before that force took up residence with everything else she currently wrestles.)

But Kara hasn’t returned to her dead planet since then. It’s just been Lena, wandering the fragments of memory that Kara had left, trying to find the bits of her best friend in the artifacts of alien culture that remained intact. She starts to find that a lot of it is recycled, populated by a virtual world that has no other frame of reference but the threads of memory Kara originally provided. Some places are duller than the rest. Unfinished, sewn together from other bits that don’t quite settle where they belong. Only two rooms out of the entire tower appear to be the most solid-- a bedroom, Lena assumes, and a larger communal space with a massive outlet to the outdoors in form of the balcony they had first appeared on. 

When she finds Kara there again, the world seems slightly brighter, slightly more… stable. 

Lena makes an awkward, abrupt halt over the smooth stone floor. She knows Kara can hear the scrape of her shoes, but Kara doesn’t turn, doesn’t move from where she’s knelt on the ground with her arms spread and fingers splayed to the red sky above. Her head is tilted back, face warmed by the sunlight.

She’s back in some sort of Kryptonian outfit. Another white dress, only this one seems more simple-- more casual, if Lena had to guess. The sleeves are shorter and flow freely at her elbows. A little golden belt encircles the dip of her waist, similar to the new suit Supergirl wears. The soft, shining waves of her hair are loose down her backside and shoulders, swept back and wind-teased. If it weren’t for the bangs, Lena might have forgotten Kara Zor-El and Supergirl were the same person. 

As the moments stretch longer, Lena realizes she can hear a small, breathy voice filling the quiet space. 

A chant of some sort, she thinks. 

Lena just stands and watches. The hard thump of her heart in her chest is painful, sharpening at the sight of Kara, and it reminds her of all the times she’d come to the virtual world intent on destroying the very woman still praying on the ground not twenty feet away. Every time she’d driven her anger into a violence and used Supergirl as the punching bag.

It’s a wrenching kind of feeling that twists her up inside, pulling tighter with every unfamiliar word uttered from Kara’s lips. 

She can’t tell when the prayer stops, whether it’s five minutes or five hours later. But when the silence floods in, Lena hears it louder than anything else. It’s deafening. 

Kara turns, then. She turns, still on her knees, and looks over at Lena standing under the arch that leads to the balcony. The red sun catches on wet tracks down her cheeks and in the round, sad cast of her eyes. 

“Lena,” is all Kara says, quiet. Cautious. 

Lena claws the contacts out of her eyes and bolts for her bedroom. 

  


_ “I have read about the five stages of grief,” _ HOPE says. _ “I believe this is considered the bargaining stage.” _

Lena stops from where she’d been pacing in her virtual laboratory. She looks sharply over at HOPE, though it’s Eve she glares at, perched on the examination table with a stiff spine. Like a human puppet for Lena’s ever-evolving AI. Only, the silver of Eve’s blank stare is decidedly not human, nor is the doll-like smile she wears. 

It’s a little unsettling. 

Lena ignores it. 

“I’m not grieving, HOPE,” Lena says, annoyed at the suggestion and almost angry that her creation would think the loss of Kara deserves any more misery than what she’s already given, “This has nothing to do with Kara now.” 

Eve’s face crumples slightly like HOPE is attempting a frown. A flash of violet light tinges the gray pallor of her eyes. _ “But you did not wish to alter humanity prior to Kara Danvers’ betrayal.” _

Lena sets a tool down on the counter with more force than necessary. The sound of the metallic impact rings loud and hollow through the room. HOPE-Eve does not flinch, but adjusts the trajectory of her stare down at the object still clutched in Lena’s hand. “Because I was an idiot, HOPE. I was blinded by--” the word swells hot in Lena’s throat until she can barely breathe, “--by a...a stupid desire to have something good in my life. Blinded by naivete. And now that I know better, I can focus on how to stop that from ever happening again. To myself or anyone else.” 

HOPE still seems confused. Eve’s face tilts, a gesture that appears too human to be entirely the AI’s doing. _ “But Kara Danvers is an alien. How will this fix humanity if she is not human?” _

Lena turns away from HOPE then. Eve’s sightless eyes are starting to worm into her thoughts, and part of her wonders if the Eve trapped inside the AI can hear her. If she understands what this virtual reality means, and if she’ll remember any of it if Lena eventually pulls her back out of stasis some day. 

Not any time soon. 

“I’m not going to fix her,” Lena tells HOPE, staring down at the program she’d started to write in the hidden confines of her virtual world. Where Andrea can’t find her-- or anyone else, for that matter. When she finally brings her gaze back to Eve’s face, the AI merely stares back. “Once I know how well you integrate into a human consciousness, and then physical form, I’m going to fix _ me _.” 

  


It should be easy, Lena thinks. All she has to do is reach inside herself and extract the crippled part and she’ll be all better. If she can just replace that hurt, cure that rotten piece of her soul inflicted upon her from birth, humanity wouldn’t hold her back any longer. Humans can’t be hurt if they have no capacity to feel that hurt-- or inflict it. She’ll do the world a service, herself included. 

She’ll fix it. She’ll fix everyone, and then everything will be okay. She could hope again.

It’s not bargaining, Lena tells herself. 

It’s _ not _. 

  


“How’d you know I desperately needed some Big Belly Burger?”

Kara’s grin is bright and magical. The corners of her eyes crinkle with the squint of her smile, the blue of her irises vivid behind the glasses on her nose. The most familiar way Lena knows her. 

Lena’s inhale is carefully controlled against the sting in her chest. 

“You always desperately need some Big Belly Burger,” Lena recites, like it’s rehearsed, like she’s said it a million and one times before. She probably has; it’s something she’s heard herself say multiple times until the response is like a reflex. And yet Kara laughs at it as always, head tossed back, laughter squeaky and unbridled. Sunshine in her eyes. 

“So true! Thanks bunches, Lena. I definitely need this pick-me-up after all the hell Andrea’s been putting me through.” Kara slumps against the L-CORP couch, sighing dramatically. Then she grabs for her burger and hums as she peels the grease-stained paper from the buns.

Lena tries not to twitch. To think about the world outside the one she’s meticulously crafted. But mentions of Andrea, even just allusions to the recent purchase of CatCo, still manage to set her on edge. “She still putting you through the ringer, hm?” Lena says, casually tucking one knee under the other where she sits a cushion away. 

Kara scoffs. “Is she _ ever _. I’m starting to realize how much I really appreciated you as boss,” she huffs, waving her burger at Lena briefly. “Getting away to do Supergirl stuff is a nightmare.” 

Lena, somehow, remains nonchalant. But maybe her silence lasts a beat too long, because Kara peers up from where she’s about to bite into her food to study Lena’s face. 

“Is that… okay?” she asks, some of her brightness dimming under a layer of worry. “The whole...mentioning Supergirl thing.” 

There’s a riot of feeling through Lena’s entire being at the thought. Too many answers surge up, all of them wildly different, each one an explosive force that she can barely contain. She stalls by shooting Kara a small, easy smile and lifting her hand from the pleather in a gesture of indifference. “Totally fine,” Lena answers after a moment. It must be convincing, because Kara relaxes immediately into the throw pillows. 

“Awesome,” Kara breathes, like a massive weight has been pried off her chest. Lena feels like it transfers onto her own, instead. “I was just...I was worried it was too much all at once, you know? I didn’t want to overwhelm you.” The relief in her expression is nearly tangible, and Lena can practically see it energize warmth and sunlight back under Kara’s skin. “Just let me know if you need me to cool it.” 

“I will,” Lena responds. She won’t. “I promise.” She doesn’t. 

A brief flash of blue gleams at the peripheral of her vision. 

  


_ “If you erase humanity’s ability to feel hurt,” _ HOPE asks one day, without any sort of prompting. Lena’s at her kitchen island eating a small breakfast. _ “Would that not hamper humanity’s ability to feel...love?” _

Lena’s fork clatters loudly against her plate. Heat spikes in her throat as she counters, “What do you know of love, HOPE?”

She’s met with that infuriating silence again. 

  


Between Lena’s time with her experiments in the virtual lab, keeping up appearances at L-CORP, and generally pretending not to be a social recluse, there’s been little time for her to visit the lost world of Krypton again. 

Not that she actively wants to. 

She doesn’t want to. 

She’s just _ curious _. 

The fact that she might encounter Kara there unexpectedly also keeps her from going back for some time, as if the sight of Kara on her knees in Kryptonian garb had chased her away. Lena knows, deep in a part of herself that she decides to keep locked far away, that Kara would not be opposed to finding Lena there. In fact, Kara might have hoped for it. 

Lena hates that she feels like she can still anticipate Kara’s thoughts. Her emotions. 

“HOPE,” Lena says, the contacts poised at the tips of her fingers. They’re not Obsidian North pale blue anymore; just clear, basic contacts, like any other prescription pair. “Please notify me this time if the other synced pair connect while I’m under.” 

_ “Of course, Miss Lu-thor.” _

When Krypton blossoms before her eyes, Lena takes in a deep, steadying breath, like she does every time she chances the alien city of-- what had Kara called it? Argo? It’s become a familiar backdrop, if only because there are only so many parts of the simulation to explore before the redundancy kicks in to fill in the gaps of Kara’s memory. 

Lena touches the metal railing of the balcony. It’s sleek and shimmery, glinting copper under the sun. Many of the buildings that surround the tower have the same alloy wrapped in artistic curls and loops up their facades, in shapes that look more impractical than anything else. But the people of Krypton did not seem as though they were artistically expressive, so Lena wonders at the architecture and the mystery of the alien design as if it might impart some arcane knowledge from sight alone. 

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?”

Lena jumps and twists hastily away from the edge of the balcony. Beside her, a woman with deep walnut hair has materialized. She stands so still, so serenely, that she almost appears to be part of the tower itself. 

Lena stares at her, noting the white streak of hair that tumbles down the left side of the dark waves. 

“HOPE,” Lena commands, instead of answering the stranger, “I told you to tell me if---”

_ “She is a memory, Miss Lu-thor. From Kara Dan-vers.” _

The woman smiles, a little wry. She has a sharp face and an equally intimidating gaze. “My niece has told me much about you, Lena Luthor,” she says, cool and disaffected. She could be royalty, Lena thinks-- or military, from the proud, regal stance she strikes. 

Lena is quiet. She hadn’t expected to come into contact with any of Kara’s family here, much less an aunt that was probably long dead. 

The woman turns from Lena and approaches the railing of the balustrade. She’s just tall enough that her forearms rest comfortably on the rail without her having to lean, and she clasps her hands together over the edge as she gazes out at the city. Wind pulls at the hooded cape she wears, and Lena is distantly reminded of Supergirl.

“Kara comes here to talk,” she says, simple and easy. “Long ago it would have been her mother she talked to. Allura had sent a holocrystal to Earth with her as a guide, which I’m told was a poor replacement for company. But, now that apparently my sister is alive--” the stranger gives a hollow laugh, “--Kara has no need for a memory of her mother.” 

Lena doesn’t understand the underlying current of satisfaction--and bitterness-- in the woman’s tone. 

Then something hits her. She hadn’t considered it before, even once she found out that Supergirl and Kara were the same person. “Her mother is alive,” Lena murmurs, mostly to herself. Hell, she met Kara’s mother-- and didn’t even know. 

The stranger glances at her from the corner of her eye. “Yes,” she says, somewhat scornfully. “Allura lives on a scrap of this very city, floating through space until she dies like the rest of us.” 

“Are you… not there?” 

The wry smile deepens into a pained bare of teeth. “I am a ghost, Lena Luthor,” she says. “A ghost pulled from my niece’s memory. I died on Earth by the hands of the one she calls sister. Now I am relegated to haunt the halls of my dead planet at the beck and call of my little Kara.” 

Lena doesn’t know what to make of this. What to think about a memory speaking to her as if she were truly a spirit trapped in synthetic version of home. She’s so-- well, _ real _. 

“Then why are you here?” Lena asks, “You’re not from my memory.” 

The woman laughs. Lena can see a little bit of Kara in it. “This is true,” she answers. “I am not. But Kara had wished for us to meet, eventually. Though I am tied to her, your creation has imparted some level of sentience upon me, despite that I am but a fragment of myself.” 

Lena leaves the simulation then, abruptly, before the reflection of Kara in the woman’s face ruins the brick and mortar she’d been building around her heart. HOPE says nothing to her; still that oppressive silence, the light of the particulate a soft blue. She starts to wonder if the AI has some other agenda for all the curveballs it’s been throwing at Lena in the virtual world. 

She doesn’t ask. 

  


_ “My prime directive is to not hurt others,” _ Hope tells her through Eve’s voice. _ “Non nocere.” _

“One of them, yes,” Lena says, still looking down at her notes. 

Hope is quiet, her stare a little more vacant than comfortably human. But she’s getting there, slowly, learning from Eve’s comatose mind in the virtual world. Little mannerisms have started to emerge the longer Lena spends with Hope in Eve’s body; the mindless kick of her feet when she sits on the examination table, the more natural slope of her mouth and pinch of her brow when she’s not smiling, but thinking. _ “But the simulations hurt you, Miss Luthor.” _

Lena stills. She doesn’t say anything for a long time. 

Hope watches her, and Lena wonders just how much the AI can truly see with that gaze. 

“Not anymore than the real world does, Hope,” Lena finally says. 

Hope’s eyes fade to a dark gray. It looks like a color of sadness. 

  


Something about Kara’s dead aunt sticks with Lena. 

Like a ghost, the woman doesn’t leave Lena’s thoughts, but not likely the same way she does to Kara. Lena sits and wonders, and considers, and imagines all sorts of scenarios into the godless hours of morning for several days before she finally gives HOPE a specific set of instructions. 

_ “This will not hurt?” _ HOPE asks her. Lena can hear worry in its voice more now, ever since the AI had taken residence in a human consciousness. 

Lena doesn’t answer. 

HOPE glows a deep violet and doesn’t ask again. 

  


He’s sitting in her office chair. It’s a familiar posture, agile and self-assured and calm. One of his legs is crossed over the other, ankle resting on a knee, as he leans against the chair’s arm, hand lifted upward to play with one of her office pens between his fingers. The suit he wears is crisp and dark. The shirt beneath is unbuttoned at the top. His eyes are sharp, perceptive, the angles of his jaw and cheeks affording him a handsome charm.

Just like she remembers. 

The pen twirls aimlessly a few times as they watch each other. His stare is a weight on Lena’s heart like it might suffocate her. The air in her office feels thin with his presence occupying the otherwise empty and immaculate room, as if it’s bursting at the seams just from him alone. 

“So,” he says, casual, gentle, a voice she thought was better off forgotten, “This is what became of our project, hm?”

Lena feels the tear slip down her cheek. It sears her skin with an uncomfortable warmth; more realistic than should be in a simulation. “Jack,” she says, softly. Strained. “It’s okay. I’m going to help everyone, just like you tried to.” 

A thick eyebrow raises at her. 

“My nanobots were meant to cure diseases. Cancer. Medical issues, not personalities,” he says. It’s admonishment, but spoken kindly, like she’s fragile. As if she could possibly break into any smaller pieces. “You can’t cure humans of their humanity, Lena.” 

Her lip twitches. “Just the bad parts,” she says, desperate for him to understand. For him to agree. “I just want to get rid of the bad parts, Jack. Humans can still be humans without hurting each other, can’t they? It’s just-- it’s just bad code.”

The pen stills between his fingers. Slowly, Jack rises out of her chair. He’s graceful, but strong, and she finds a mote of comfort just watching him cross the floor of her office. It’s familiar, in an aching, horrible kind of way. 

“My dear Lena,” he says. Her vision swims, the outline of him blurring behind her tears. He reaches out to place his hands on her shoulders, holding her an arm’s length apart like he used to. She doesn’t feel anything. “The singularity won’t save humanity. Having the potential to do wrong is part of being a human. If you take that away, there will be no more humanity. We aren’t machines to be programmed.” 

“Wouldn’t it be for the better if we were?” Lena whispers at him. “Then no one would hurt anymore.” 

The vision of Jack just looks at her. It’s the same look Kara gave her, like they both can see past all of her barriers and into the vestiges of her soul. Like there’s an answer hiding there that not even Lena can see.

“Being hurt is part of the human experience,” he says. “It’s what we do with that hurt that defines us, Lena. Not our capability for it.” 

Then, before she can respond, he tilts forward and places a kiss at her hairline. 

The simulation ends. 

  


Kara finds her drunk in her living room. 

Or, somewhere. 

Lena’s somewhere in the apartment when Supergirl enters through the open balcony window. (Lena only knows it’s open because she can feel the breeze wash over her face in a continuous, rolling gust. It’s the only thing that manages to keep her awake. Also, her alarm doesn’t go off.)

“Shupergirl,” Lena says in lieu of greeting. 

She forgets it’s Kara. 

Supergirl drifts down to the floor onto the knees of her boots. Lena sees her reach out a hand, hesitant, like she’s unsure if she can touch. “Lena,” the hero says, and even inebriated Lena can hear the strong note of concern in her voice. A familiar, pretty voice. She knows that voice. “Are you okay?”

Lena lifts a hand. She forgets her glass of wine is in it, and the red splashes out and onto Supergirl’s house sigil. She blinks at the splatter that darkens the blue of the suit, trying to figure out if it’s wine or a blood stain. “I saw Jack,” Lena blurts, eyebrows drawn together in surprise like she herself just found out. 

Supergirl freezes. She ignores the stain on her chest. “Spheer?”

“Yeah. Him.” She doesn’t protest when Supergirl gently takes the glass from her hand to set it on the coffee table. 

Lena’s head is starting to bob forward when she hears, “In… the virtual world?”

Looking at Supergirl is difficult. She won’t stop _ moving _; the more Lena tries to concentrate, the more Supergirl seems to sway back and forth and fade out of focus. “Stop moving,” Lena mutters at her, blinking bleary eyes. “Can’t-- can’t see you.” 

A frown creases over Supergirl’s face, from what Lena can tell. “Let’s get you to bed,” the hero suggests, soft, almost whispering. Kind. Sweet. Lena can feel something warm and solid slide around the back of her shoulders and beneath the undersides of her knees. Then she’s floating, and the change in elevation makes her want to vomit. 

Instead, Lena says, “I killed him. Fff-for you. To save you.” She blinks again. The world is tilting dangerously around the corners of her vision. Who did she kill? Someone. Many someones. 

Supergirl doesn’t say anything. Lena can feel the grip around her tighten. 

The next time she opens her eyes, Lena is on her back. In her bed. Someone tugs gently at her ponytail until the hair tie slips loose, and her hair falls in a crimp over her pillow. She thinks she feels something graze her cheek, maybe the brief cradle of a warm palm as it pets the stray hairs from her eyes. 

Kara’s face hovers close by. Her bangs are skewed, her hair down and in slight disarray around her neck and shoulders. She’s not wearing her glasses. The pain in her stare is suddenly in hyperfocus, and Lena feels like she’s drowning in it. So sad and mournful. Lena tries to reach up and touch her face, to wipe that look away. 

“Get some rest,” Kara says. Lena remembers that she’s Supergirl when her gaze slips down to the stained super suit, and an ugly, sick feeling curdles in her stomach. “I’m… here if you need anything.”

Lena stares at her. Blinks some more. “Why _ are _you here?”

There’s that sad, sad look again. There aren’t enough miserable adjectives in the world to describe how sad it is, and all she can think is that it’s just really _ fucking sad _ and Lena almost can’t stand it. “HOPE asked me to come,” Kara answers. Quiet. Afraid, maybe. Her eyes are so blue. So, so sad. 

Lena can’t tell if they’re Kryptonian blue or HOPE blue. 

When she wakes the next morning in her bed, alone and aching, Lena still can’t figure out if Kara was really there or if she’d conjured Supergirl in her dream. Or if it was just another simulation. 

Lena finds she doesn’t want to know. 

  


_ “Miss Luthor,” _ Eve says, in Hope’s voice. _ “I am… concerned.” _

Lena rubs at the bags under her eyes with the heel of her hand. “What about, Hope?” she asks, tired, unthinkingly, only half listening. 

_ “I am concerned you have transitioned into the fourth stage of grief.” _

“I’m not grieving.” Maybe she is. Her brother did die, after all, for the same cause Jack did. Along with a few other things inside of her heart that linger there like corpses. 

Hope has mastered the art of a doubtful frown by now, and she fixes Lena with it. It’s a very Eve-like expression. Part of Lena regrets ever using her former employee as her robot’s vessel. _ “You told me to help mankind. To do no harm. Yet I have not helped you, and you continue to hurt.” _ The AI sounds troubled; her emotions are becoming more complex, more… human. _ “I… do not know how to help you, Miss Luthor.” _

Lena sighs. She rubs at her eyes again in a vain effort to stymie the headache that’s been slowly gaining traction over the last couple hours. It’s been her constant state of being for, well-- a while now. Longer than she really cares to track. Headaches, fatigue, and the cracked, dusty riverbed of her emotional wellspring. 

“You are helping me, Hope,” Lena says, eventually looking up at Eve twiddling her hands in her lap. Hope, not Eve, Lena has to remind herself. “You are my only friend. You brought me back from the point of no return. And soon, you’ll help stop my hurt and everyone else’s.” 

There’s a beat of quiet as Hope considers this, though from the steady way she looks at Lena, it almost appears as though she had been probing for a different response. As if that wasn’t the real question she was asking. 

_ “Am I your friend the way Kara Danvers was your friend?” _

A hard lump lodges in Lena’s throat. She takes a shallow breath. 

She doesn’t answer. 

  


Supergirl doesn’t rescue Lena from her wine bottle that night. 

Lena still sits by the open balcony, clutching the last of her pinot and hating herself for wishing she would. 

  


“Lena?”

Kara’s eyes are wide, stunned, and blinking slightly in disbelief. She’s still standing in her doorway, her hand on the door knob, as she stares out at Lena in the hall. 

Lena doesn’t know why she’s there. Not in so many words, anyway; there’s a small, unbearable knot in her chest, tied up in all the threads of her anguish and pain and desire and nameless wishes that have cobwebbed all through her insides. It sits right between her lungs like a lump of coal and burns. And she’s here, at Kara’s doorstep, because if she ignores it any longer, it might torch her from the inside out and reduce her to cinders. 

Kara stands a moment longer, hesitation tensing hard in her shoulders and neck. But there’s a kernel of warmth in her still, a slight catch of breath, like the uneasy first steps of hope budding behind the apprehension. It’s a light in her eyes, in that lovely, crisp shade of blue.

The door opens a little wider. “Do you-- are-- I--” Kara steps back, taking a breath. “Do you want to come in?”

Lena keeps her mouth shut. She doesn’t trust whatever comment might come hurtling out of her if she answers. Teeth clenched, neck strained, she just gives Kara a stiff nod and treads carefully into the open layout of the apartment when Kara steps farther aside. 

It hasn’t changed. Somehow, Lena expects the inside to be different-- she almost hopes it is, because it would be so much easier if Kara had just scrubbed every little reminder of their past from view. But there are the curtains that Lena had teased Kara over, the couch they foisted all the pillows on and sank into for movie nights, the photo frames littered about in the same eclectic cluster of decor and homey charm. She even sees herself in one, glossed over by a yellow lamp light. 

It’s like Lena had only left that morning, for all the difference there is. 

Kara stands by the door, holding her hands like she doesn’t know what to do with them. Trying not to fidget. 

“Can I…” Lena glances at her. “Get you something to drink?”

A curt shake of her head. Then, cautiously, Lena wets her lips and says, “No, thank you.” 

The sound of her voice breaks some sort of tension over Kara; Lena can see the slight sag of her shoulders, like pressure had been building up her spine with Lena’s mounting silence. 

Kara bites on her lip. Lena can practically feel the war inside of her, even across the room. Like she can’t decide what to say, what to do, how to act. Like she’s trying so hard to make the right choice. 

“I met your Aunt,” Lena says suddenly, shattering the uncertainty brewing like storm clouds above them. She doesn’t know why she says it any more than she knows why she’s standing in the middle of Kara Danvers’ apartment. 

Kara’s eyes flare wide for moment behind her glasses. “Aunt Astra?”

Lena doesn’t know the woman’s name-- she never asked for it. But it must be her, considering how little alternatives there are. “I met her in a simulation,” she says instead of answering. “She seems...nice.” 

The noise Kara makes sounds suspiciously like a controlled snort of mild laughter. When the quiet threatens to descend again, she gestures slightly at the couch behind Lena, and slowly treks toward the living room when Lena turns to take a seat. “She was when I was little,” Kara explains, glancing at the available space with an awkward reluctance. She eventually sits in a chair opposite of where Lena perches on the corner of the couch. “She was a General for Krypton’s military force.” It makes sense, from what Lena gathered of the woman she’d briefly met. “And she was a traitor.” 

The word rings hollow. It sticks in Lena’s mind, prickly and cold. 

Lena looks down at her own hands. She doesn’t fidget like Kara does; she just squeezes her fingers tight, hands rigid, knuckles pale. “So why is she in your virtual Krypton?” Lena hears herself ask. Her voice sounds distant. Detached. 

“Because I love her, even still.” There’s a wistful note to the way Kara says it. When Lena glances at her, Kara is looking away. Out at the window on the far wall, past the glass and into the velvet night that encases the apartment building, as if the memory of her aunt lurks just beyond the brick. “She and I were close, when I was growing up. And when my mother arrested her and threw her into Fort Rozz, I never stopped believing she was good.” Kara swallows, licks at her lips, and shrugs. “I guess I just wanted to have her back the way I remembered her, before she came to Earth. Before I found out the rest.” 

Lena lets out a small breath that shakes at the edges. Recognition sparks within her like a stark, cruel light. It illuminates the dark corners inside herself that she wishes would stay shrouded in that old familiar curtain of denial. 

Kara turns her gaze back to Lena. It stops her from attempting to wrangle control of the conversation again, to steer it away from the reason she darkened Kara’s doorstep in the first place. “I didn’t know you went back,” is what Kara says, simple, a little hushed. When Lena doesn’t answer right away, she adds, “I thought-- you looked so angry, last time. I didn’t think you’d ever go back.” 

There are tears in Kara’s eyes now. Shining and thick. The way her neck moves, strains, catapults the memory of her confession back into Lena’s thoughts. Her throat bobs in effort to keep the tears from falling where they well up through her eyelashes. It’s so delicately human that Lena can forget, for a few precious moments, that her best friend was born on a planet blown to oblivion lightyears away. 

Lena stares at the quiver of Kara’s mouth and fights back the heat climbing up the back of her own throat. “I go back,” she breathes, “all the time.” Without meaning, her gaze flickers up. A drop falls from behind Kara’s glasses. “I can’t stay away from it.” Another shaky inhale, this one an audible pause. The breath catches unevenly in her chest. “I can’t stay away from you.” 

Kara’s eyes flutter closed. Her mouth presses together, and she ducks her head as the rest of her tears escape. 

“I-- I have _ tried _ .” Lena keeps talking, as if the words have snapped the floodgates in her chest into sodden tinder and they leave her in a rush she can no longer stopper. They’re low, rough, and melted at the edges with hot tears of her own. “I have tried so hard to stay away from you. To hate you, Kara.” Her fist is tight on her knee. “I want-- I wanted to hurt you. To make you feel what I feel. But I’m just--” her voice breaks, “--I’m so _ tired _.” 

Lena drops her face into her hands, fingers bracketing her eyes to stave off the wave of scalding tears from spilling out onto her cheeks. Through her shuddering breaths, she can hear the faintest rustle of movement. A pause. Then the couch dips beside her thigh, and the soft pressure of a hand settles on her shoulder. 

“I’m so tired, Kara,” Lena cries into her palms. “So _ fucking _ tired of all this. Of hurting. I just want it to _ stop _.” 

She can feel Kara’s thumb rub gently against the material of her coat. “What can I do to help, Lena?” Kara says, so soft and low that Lena almost misses it through her ragged gasps for air. “How can I make it better?” 

Lena lifts her head. Turns. Kara withdraws her hand, unsure, before she opens her arms in silent offering. Dim light catches on the wetness of Kara’s cheeks as she waits, the moment suspended in a frozen heartbeat of time. 

The knot in Lena’s chest breaks. 

No thoughts precede her decision-- it’s not even a decision, but an instinct that she doesn’t register. It’s a split moment of heavy silence before Lena is leaning into Kara’s arms, reaching up, closing her hands around the cut of Kara’s jaw and pulling her in, mouth crashing into the tears on Kara’s lips and moving deep, wild, aching and trembling, salt on her tongue and gasping hard and wet. Heat bursts through her chest and down her spine, echoing the warmth swollen on her lips. 

It makes sense. 

That this is where she would end up-- that after everything, this is what made the pain recede, what made that chasm yawned between her ribs close a little tighter. She couldn’t see it or even dare to think about it while consumed by the wildfire of her anger and bitter rage. But now that she’s empty of that flame, her fury reduced to smoldering embers, Lena knows it’s been this all along that haunted her since Lex’s death. What she’s been denying with every simulation she punished herself and Kara in over and over again. 

Her hands are shaking. When she opens her eyes, Lena’s heart gives a terrible, squeezing lurch of realization. 

The image of Kara dissolves into motes of white light between her fingers. The specks vanish into the air, taking with them the scenery of the apartment until Lena is left in a barren space of white nothingness. 

Eve stands in front of her, eyes stormy gray. 

_ “This isn’t healthy, Miss Luthor,” _ Hope says. Though her tone is soft, timid even, it sounds like thunder in Lena’s ears. 

Lena can’t breathe. The disappearance of Kara and her apartment has taken all of the air out of the room with it. 

She looks down at her hands. The hands that had held Kara’s face when she kissed her, fingertips tangled into the feathery blonde hairs at the back of Kara’s neck and behind her ears. It had felt so… _ real _. Her mouth still tingles with the memory of pressure, of warmth and the wet brush of tongue. She can still taste salt on her lips. 

They’re her own tears, Lena realizes. With a hiccuping sob, Lena buries her face into her hands and slumps to the featureless ground on her knees.

“I loved her, Hope,” she cries, as Hope kneels in front of her. All of the pain that had withdrawn at the touch of Kara’s mouth comes slamming back into her chest, bearing down with such force that it feels like all the bone and tissue might splinter at any moment. “I still-- I _ still _love her.”

_ “I know,” _ the AI answers. She gathers Lena against herself, and the sensation is immediately different than Kara; with Hope inhabiting a true consciousness, Eve’s body feels solid, concrete, like she’s physically present in the blinding void beside Lena and not a ghost Lena had desperately tried to kiss into existence. Hope is a stone, while Kara had been water between her fingers.

Even still, Lena clutches to Hope as an anchor, like she, too, might fade away. 

HOPE is right. 

It’s not healthy. 

It certainly isn’t helping. 

And like HOPE, Lena doesn’t know what to do about it. 

She spends more time in the simulated world, despite the fact that both she and Hope know it’s probably a contributing factor to Lena’s declining mental health. Most of the time it’s spent in a virtual copy of her own apartment; a little bubble within a bubble, where the real world and all of its unyielding bullshit can’t touch her. Only sometimes does she brave returning to Krypton, whenever she knows Kara’s contacts aren’t linked to that world. But she never stays long-- never long enough to cross paths with Astra again, though she suspects Hope is responsible for keeping her from encountering that particular memory.

Hope has progressed exponentially over time. Lena still sees Eve within her, and catches herself a few times with that name on her tongue before swallowing it back. It’s harder when a few aspects of Eve’s personality start to resonate with Hope and merge into her artificial personality, like she’s absorbing Eve into herself instead of the other way around. Lena begins to wonder what would happen if she gave Hope a different host; would the personality of Eve transfer over, or would Hope adapt to the new brain and the behaviors already etched into its neural receptors? 

Hope leans against her kitchen counter one day, watching her with those bright eyes. They’re blue now-- a soft, almost powder blue, somewhere between the natural shade of Eve’s and the color of Hope’s thoughtful light. _ “I might have a solution,” _ Hope tells her, hands clasped in front as if she has to restrain herself from showing too much enthusiasm. It’s a contrast to her earlier iterations, where the finesse of emotion was lost on an AI incapable of differentiating the nuances in casual conversation. 

Now she’s… well, practically human. 

Lena faces her with a slight hitch of an eyebrow. “Solution to what?”

In true human fashion, Hope rolls her eyes. _ “To your grie-- uh, your… problem. With Kara Danvers.” _

A spark of anxiety skitters through her veins. It’s not something they discuss; ever since Hope had pulled Lena out of that last fantasy (of which Lena still dreams of, the phantom warmth lingering on her lips when she wakes), they’ve dropped the subject entirely. 

After clearing her throat and aiming for nonchalance, Lena responds, “I’m not sure this problem can be fixed, Hope. We’ve tried.” 

Well. Not completely-- Lena’s experiment is collecting dust, the schematics still hidden away in the virtual lab where no one else could possibly find them. There had been a dark, aching moment when she’d approached her program, ready to initiate it for herself. Ready to wipe the slate clean and start all over.

But Hope had moved her hand away. Ejected her right out of the virtual world. 

They don’t talk much about Lena’s ambitious goal to save humanity any more. 

(How can she, Lena thinks, when she can’t even save herself?)

(It’s not because the thought of erasing her feelings for Kara seems the equivalent of ripping the very fibers of herself apart. It’s just a weakness, one more thing to cripple Lena under the name of Luthor.) 

(If this is what she gets for loving Kara Danvers, then so be it.)

Hope tilts her head. A curl of platinum hair bobs gently around her face. Lena notices that Hope doesn’t keep her hair straightened anymore; every day she looks more, _ acts _more, like Eve. 

A current of concern slithers under Lena’s skin. 

_ “Have you tried… therapy?” _

Lena blinks. Then she throws her head back and laughs. “Therapy for a Luthor is like a bandaid for a broken arm, Hope,” she tells the AI, “We need something more substantial to fix what’s wrong with us. Like a psych ward.” She snorts. “Though, load of good that did my brother.”

_ “Have you ever seen a therapist?” _

“No.” Lena toys with a pen she’d conjured into the virtual space. It’s the same pen Jack had been playing with back in her simulated office, and she keeps it in her hand like a token of his memory. “Mother was very adamant that shrinks were all quacks out looking to make the next dollar off poor, delicate fools who couldn’t handle their tender feelings.” 

_ “James Olsen went to therapy.” _

Lena twitches. A frosty guilt coils up in her stomach. She flips the pen between her fingers as a distraction. “He had a reason to,” she tells Hope, like it makes perfect sense that Lena _ wouldn’t _, “He had actual trauma to work through.” 

As soon as she says it, Lena knows the implication is rotten and wrong. 

Hope makes a soft humming sound. _ “I think you’ve had more trauma than most people, Miss Luthor,” _ she says quietly. _ “Both you and Miss Danvers.” _

A long sigh pulls out of Lena. She twirls the pen a few times, the same pattern as Jack used to, and then taps it against the marble. “Isn’t that the truth,” she mutters.

_ “Consider it, at least. It might not fix you, but it could… get the process started.” _

Lena stares down at the pen. 

She thinks of Jack. 

_ It’s what we choose to do with that hurt that defines us, _ he’d said. Of course it hadn’t truly been him-- just a shadow of her memory, influenced by her own struggling subconscious. But she likes to think that it’d be something he’d say, something he might have said back in their younger, more innocent days.

We always have a choice, Lena had once told Eve.

What should she choose? 

  


“There’s a lot to unpack here.” 

Lena shifts uncomfortably in the chair. Kelly gazes around, her kind face contemplative as she takes in the surroundings. She doesn’t seem put off by any of it, though she’d blinked in surprise when Hope materialized as an adult woman. Much to Lena’s relief, Kelly doesn’t appear to recognize her. 

Lena doesn’t really know why she dragged Kelly Olsen into her virtual reality. 

Only that Hope had asked her to do it, and the idea that these wounds still bleeding in her heart might eventually heal fuels her like a shot of adrenaline. 

Kelly’s talking about the video clips Hope had shown her. It was only a few simulations, nothing too drastic or implicating, but Kelly is sharp-- her mind picks up on all the little things, almost like she can see everything that was carefully omitted and how it speaks volumes more than what was not. 

“A lot more than talk therapy can tackle,” Lena comments. 

Kelly just smiles. “Not even close, Lena.” 

  


Therapy doesn’t cure her. 

But she’s starting to understand that’s not the point. 

  


Hope doesn’t manifest one day. 

Lena discovers that the AI has released itself from Eve’s mind when she finds the familiar shape of silver photoparticulate hovering above a long-empty dock. 

_ “I helped her,” _ it tells Lena when she questions it. _ “Just like Kelly is helping you.” _

  


Lena lets Eve go. 

  


She still doesn’t talk to Kara. 

(She dreams about her, though.) 

  


And then she doesn’t get the chance. 

\---

Like termites, Leviathan comes crawling out of the woodwork; there are thousands of them, and it’s almost hilarious how many of them were employed by Lena herself without her suspecting a thing. A fourth of CatCo belongs to them as well, a surprisingly smaller number than most media outlets when Leviathan finally reveals itself in its entirety. 

Lena is _ bristling _with fury when she finds out they founded CADMUS under Lillian, too.

Maxwell Lord. Morgan Edge. Her mother, her brother. Andrea. 

All of them are tainted by Leviathan’s influence, and Lena is almost proud that they could never seem to reach her. Not all the way. 

  


Leviathan tears the city apart. 

  


It’s utter chaos; buildings come crashing into the streets, filling the air with glass and steel and plumes of debris. Lena doesn’t know what weapons they’re using, but they’re effective; nearly a quarter of National City is already in ruins by the time she ducks her way into safety, and she’s yet to see a streak of scarlet come arcing through the sky to save the day. 

The more buildings collapse, the harder the dread in Lena’s stomach clenches. 

She makes it to the DEO with one broken heel and her black hair coated in a layer of ashy cement dust. The agents there don’t seem to notice her much; only a few of them look toward her and then hurriedly scatter out of her way. 

The DEO quakes from an impact, nearly pitching Lena to the ground. 

Alex, of all people, catches her by the elbow. 

“Lena?” she says, incredulous and maybe even a little relieved. 

Lena stares at Alex’s face. It’s pale, dominated by worry and fear. They haven’t seen each other in a long time, but the sight of Alex nestles something warm safely inside of Lena, like they’re snapping back into place where they belong. 

Like friends. 

“How can I help?” Lena asks, and without hesitation Alex escorts her to a comm room that is still intact. 

  
  


Supergirl falls from the sky. 

And falls. 

  


And falls. 

Lena is out of her seat, racing down the hall and out of the building, before she hears the sickening impact. 

  


She screams Kara’s name. 

She keeps screaming, pushing through the throng of agents that have already arrived on scene. Whatever foe Supergirl had been fighting is gone; whether she defeated them or they escaped, no one knows. No one cares. 

For all of the anger and resentment Lena had toward Supergirl in her own simulated fights, she’d never imagine Kara could look like this. That the Girl of Steel with sunshine in her bones could look… fragile. Broken. 

The crater that cushioned Supergirl’s descent is massive, ridged with asphalt in perfect concentric circles from the aftershock that exploded outward on contact. Lena scrambles over the shattered street, catching herself on prongs of rebar that were torn from beneath the earth and slabs of concrete jutting upward from where they’d fallen. It never seems to end, for all of the running and scrabbling and screaming Lena does. 

And then suddenly Supergirl is laying at her feet. Face down, cape draped ominously over the prone figure, blonde hair teased lightly by the wind with streaks of red matting the strands together. 

Lena falls onto her knees, ignoring the sharp pain of debris pinching into her skin. 

Supergirl is surprisingly light for a person who carries a star inside herself; Lena tugs her by the shoulder, rolling her onto her backside, bile in her mouth at the sudden, horrible thought that something grotesque might have happened to that beautiful face. 

But when she sees her, all Lena can think of is,

“Kara,” Lena breathes, choking on the word. “Kara. Kara, open your eyes.” 

She’s not wearing her glasses, or any of her cute cardigans, or her usual ponytail, or any other thing that would have made her Kara Danvers to Lena. Nothing of it is there; it’s all Supergirl in that face, the alien from a dead world, the superhero born to earth from the heavens. 

All Lena sees is Kara. 

A pale, limp, lifeless Kara. 

Lena drags the hero into her lap, clutching at her shoulders with every last bit of strength she has. “Kara,” she begs, “Wake up. Please, wake up.” 

The silence is eerie.

A helpless sob coughs out of Lena, and she pulls Kara tighter to herself, cradling Kara’s head in her lap, her violently trembling hands cupped around blood-splattered cheeks. She smears some of it with her thumb, and almost recoils at how cold Kara’s skin feels. 

“Kara,” she says again, “please. Please.” 

Supergirl remains unmoving. Like she’s made of stone. Lena wipes again at her face, more forcefully, still repeating her name like Kara might spring to life if she says it just the right amount of times, more frantic with every minute that passes and the alien in her arms remains motionless. 

When a dark thought occurs to her, Lena jerks her gaze up to the sky. It looks picture-perfect, serene even, ignorant to the desecration right below it. 

Of course. Of _ course _. This wasn’t real.

It couldn’t be real.

“HOPE,” Lena cries, hoarse and fragmented, maybe a little hysterical with jagged ends of relief, “HOPE, end simulation! _ End simulation! _”

Her voice echoes. 

_ “HOPE!” _

Nothing. Supergirl seems to grow heavier in Lena’s grasp. 

The shadow of understanding pools up in her gut, spreading its grisly, knife-like fingers up through her insides as it slowly dawns. There is no HOPE. There is no simulation. 

The Kara she clings to is the original, and no virtual reality was going to change that. 

“Kara,” Lena nearly growls, desperation lacing her voice deep and throaty, pierced by the tears falling freely from her eyes, “Kara, _ wake up _ . You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to- you can’t do this. I haven’t-- I need to tell you, I was supposed to tell you--” she takes a gasping breath and leans her head down to press against the tattered sigil on Kara’s chest, “--I haven’t forgiven you yet, goddamn it, I’m still- I’m still angry, and you can’t go before I forgive you, you can’t leave when it’s still like this-- _ fuck _ , Kara! You just _ can’t! _”

She cries into the El Mayarah, rocking slightly on her knees, clutching Kara to herself as if she might keep that spirit from floating away. 

“We were supposed to get better,” she tells her through the wild breaths she manages, “We were supposed to-- I was going to tell you-- I needed to tell you--” The words are lost in her gasps, in her cries, in the tears that soak through the stained supersuit. 

Then the smallest tremor trickles through the muscle just beneath Lena’s palm.

When Lena lifts her head just enough to look down at her, Kara’s eyes are open. 

Half-hooded, but open. 

Time halts abruptly; nanoseconds or centuries could have passed, and she wouldn’t have known.

“Kara?” Lena breathes, just as the superhero manages to lift a quivering, dirty hand to touch Lena’s cheek. 

“What,” Kara croaks, “did you need to tell me?”

Lena doesn’t think. “That I hate you,” she says immediately, just as she dips down and crashes her mouth into Kara’s, even though Kara is filthy and bloody and probably a little sore from the little grunt that rises out of her chest, but Lena doesn’t care. She kisses Kara harder, like every breath needs to be stolen from her mouth, and Kara leaves her grime-coated hand gently caressing the side of Lena’s face until they’re both wheezing for air. 

Kara looks a little dazed when they part. Glassy-eyed. “Hate, huh?” 

Alex crests the top of the small ridge beside them before Lena can respond. But she smiles, even as Alex hoists Kara with the help of another agent onto a stretcher, and Kara smiles back. 

  


Lena doesn’t visit her at the DEO. Not because she plans on avoiding Supergirl, but because she decides to give Kara space to heal and concentrate on her bodily injuries before diving into the emotional wreckage Lena has been carrying around for months. And also because Lena needs that space to figure out what she truly wants to say instead of relying on a simulation for do-over after do-over. 

For the first time, HOPE glows a soft, luminous gold. 

  


Kara comes to her first. 

It’s a full week after the Leviathan Event. Repairs to the city keep everyone busy, including Supergirl, but even the relentless heroine gets a break. Lena isn’t expecting her. Yet when she gets a text message just before ten o’clock, she’s not entirely unsurprised. 

She thinks Kara will land on the balcony, probably, come striding in from the open window. So when Lena hears a soft knock at the door about fifteen minutes later, she blinks at it a few times before unfurling from the couch. 

“Hi,” Kara says when the door opens. Her hair is down, but she’s wearing her glasses and a familiar sweater with a collared blouse beneath. Her hands twist nervously together. Lena doesn’t see any sign of the wounds from the fight with Leviathan’s metahuman weapon, but in her mind’s eye she can trace the invisible scars and the stains of blood that had covered her skin. 

“Hi,” Lena returns. 

They trail into the apartment together. Closer than they’ve been in a long time, but still farther apart than what used to be usual. Wordless, they both drift toward the large white sofa. 

Kara sits politely one cushion over. It’s not her regular spot, Lena notices. “I know you’re still mad,” she says, breaking the gentle quiet that had slowly eked through the apartment in their wake. “I know I can’t do much to make up for it. But you’re still-- you’re still my best friend, Lena. I would do anything for you.” 

Lena looks at her, then down at her hands, then over at something on her mantle to help disentangle her thoughts. Kelly had wanted her to start being honest with herself-- with her thoughts and her feelings and her gut reactions, and not just brush them off as something else entirely or drown them as best she could in her impressive liquor cabinet. No hiding from all the little parts of her that still exist inside her heart, even if she’s not quite ready to face them all yet. 

Lena clears her throat. She looks over at Kara, steady and calm, though her chest pinches from a short, sudden spike of anxiety. “I’m in love with you,” she says. 

Kara doesn’t move. 

(Is she breathing? Lena can’t tell if she’s breathing.)

She swallows, and continues, “It’s so much harder for me to be at peace with… all of this, knowing that I was in love with Kara Danvers but not Supergirl. It hurt so much worse.” As if to demonstrate, Lena idling touches her fingertips to her chest, right above where her heart flutters as Kara’s gaze follows the movement. “I didn’t know I only loved half a person. And to find out from my brother was just-- it just made it worse.” 

Kara nods. It’s a slightly jerky motion, and from where Lena sits she can hear Kara’s sharp intake of breath. 

“I can’t forgive you yet, Kara,” Lena says, a little quieter. “Not yet. But I think I can, eventually.” 

Kara’s small smile is watery. It takes a few minutes for the gravity of it to settle, for them both to release the hidden tension that tethered them together. “So, you’re telling me there’s… hope?” Kara asks, tone light. Like Lena remembers. 

The hour-glass shape in the corner of her kitchen flares a brief yellow, and Lena laughs. 

  


_ “I want to help others,” _ HOPE says, _ “like I helped you and Eve. Isn’t that what you meant for me to do?” _

“Yes, it is.” Lena looks over at the oscillating particulate, wondering at this little creation of hers that had evolved so gracefully since its initial inception. It became something far greater than Lena had ever meant, and she thinks it will become greater still. “But I’m going to miss you.” 

The light flashes a gentle blue, then a faint, warm amber. _ “I will miss you too, Miss Luthor.” _

“Kelly will take great care of you, I’m sure,” Lena tells the AI, just as the woman in question steps into the office. They’ve already gone over all the specifics of the transfer and how HOPE will integrate into the neural net system for Kelly’s therapy techniques via the lenses Lena had carefully replicated from Obsidian North’s technology. But despite the important work she knows HOPE will be doing to recover lost memories and rebuild the mental health of countless people, Lena can’t shake the feeling that she’s sending her firstborn off to school for the first time. “Just remember-- timed simulations are key, and always--”

_ “--make sure the patient is aware of their surroundings,” _ the AI finishes. _ “I remember.” _

Kelly laughs. It’s a kind, easy sound that soothes some of the nerves firing in Lena’s stomach. “We’ll be very careful,” she tells Lena as the AI’s dock is cautiously placed into her hands. “We promise.”

“I know,” Lena says, waving a hand and smiling despite herself, “I know you two will do just fine. But call if you need anything, okay?”

HOPE’s silvery particulate ripples._ “You can always visit me, Miss Luthor. It’s not like I’ll be very far away.” _

Lena smiles. She knows exactly where to find HOPE if she needs, but it’s been a long while since she had a desire to immerse herself into a simulation again. Besides; it’d be difficult not to think of Eve the whole time, and that’s still something Lena has to focus letting go of. 

“Take care,” Lena tells the AI. A moment later she adds, “And thank you-- for everything. For giving me,--” she smiles, humored, “hope.”

Lena says her goodbyes a final time as Kelly steps back through the double doors of the L-CORP office. When they close behind her, Lena thinks the office feels a little more empty than usual. 

Then the door swings back open, and Kara slides inside, a greasy paper bag gripped in one hand. 

“Thought you could use a pick-me-up,” Kara says, as Lena stands to greet her. 

“Are you trying to bribe me with Big Belly Burger, Miss Danvers?”

Kara sets the bag onto the coffee table and gives an innocent bat of her eyelashes. “That depends. Is it working?” 

Warmth springs up in Lena’s chest, temporarily overtaking the slight melancholy of HOPE’s departure. She maneuvers over to the couch and plops down next to Kara before peering into the bag and snagging a french fry out of the massive cup she knows belongs to the bottomless pit of an alien beside her. “Like a charm,” Lena answers around the steaming, starchy goodness. She laughs when Kara scowls, and doesn’t attempt to stop the retaliating swipe from her own much smaller fry basket. 

It’s getting easier. Each day, it almost seems like, they slowly inch back toward something familiar, something stable and genuine. The knots in Lena begin to loosen and unravel, no longer choking the life out of her ability to forgive like a tourniquet bound around the trusting part of herself. It helps that Kara respects her boundaries, and for the most part they can talk out their issues like actual adults-- save the few minor times either of them lose their cool during an argument. But the connection persists; whatever it is she has with Kara Danvers and Supergirl and Kara Zor-El, it remains steadfast. 

Kara’s crinkly smile shoots over at Lena from behind a fry. 

Lena tilts forward and snags it out of Kara’s fingers with her teeth, grinning in victory when Kara gapes and stutters. 

It gets easier. It’s not perfect progress by any means-- but it’s progress. 

  


“Close your eyes! It doesn’t work if you don’t close your eyes.” 

Lena frowns. “I highly doubt that.” 

“Okay, _ obviously _it works if you don’t close your eyes, but you’ll ruin the surprise.” 

Lena’s eyes flutter shut, and the world of Krypton disappears behind her eyelids as she waits for Kara to do… whatever it is she’s being so cryptic about. She doesn’t feel any different; Kara doesn’t touch her, doesn’t even seem to move. 

“Open!”

When Lena blinks over at Kara, nothing’s changed. 

She’s just about to make a remark when Lena notices a soft, woolen blue hanging from her arm. A glance downward reveals that the change came from her own clothing-- instead of the blouse and skirt combo she’d worn into the simulation, a thick-looking blue fabric drapes from her shoulders like a cape, or a cloak. A white dress slims to her figure just beneath it. 

Lena touches a hand to the El Mayarah stamped over the chest. 

She’s never worn Kryptonian clothing before. Kara rarely wears it when they visit-- which isn’t often in the first place, but more now than before-- so she’s a little startled to find herself dressed in it, even if she can’t feel the cloth any more than a slight suggestion of weight. 

When Lena looks back over at Kara, she’s wearing a similar outfit. 

“I remembered a song today,” Kara says, though her gaze is fixated on Lena’s body, “and I thought it would be something nice to celebrate together.” 

She holds out a hand; as soon as Lena takes it, a soft sound echoes out from within the atrium of the tower and out across the balcony where they stand. It’s not an instrument that Lena can identify readily, but it sounds similar to the bowing of a violin and plucking of harp strings all at once. It creates a crystal-like melody that rises and wanes, swells and sinks, at a gentle, languid pace. 

Kara pulls Lena closer until they’re near flush together. Mindful of any protests, she loops one arm around the white dress at Lena’s hips, under the cloak, and twines her other hand into Lena’s. 

And then they float. 

“I thought your people didn’t have powers on Krypton,” Lena murmurs, hushed at her proximity to Kara’s face. They spin lazily in the air above the balcony’s stone floor, the red sunlight awash over the burnished gold of Kara’s hair and flecking in her eyes. 

A small smile tilts at the corner of Kara’s mouth. “We didn’t,” she says. “But this isn’t really Krypton, so I get some creative liberties.” It’s said easily, but Lena knows-- now-- how deeply that truth sits, how much it weighs on her from day to day. Lena still isn’t completely certain whether the simulated Krypton comforts more than it hurts Kara, but she lets that judgement rest with her. 

Kara’s gaze is steady, low-lidded with a soft affection. 

“What made you think of this song?” Lena probes, as the ringing legato of the notes rise higher, keening like a human voice might. 

They twirl again. It’s a very human dance, like the middle school basics of a waltz, and Lena wonders if Kara remembers anything of Kryptonian dances. Or if they even danced at all. 

“You,” Kara answers. 

The ache in Lena’s chest is sweet; golden and warm and fluttery. When Kara pulls her back in, the warmth spreads liquid under her skin and gathers in her center until it feels like she radiates light. Like she has a star burning inside of herself, ready to illuminate the world. 

She doesn’t have to tell Kara in as many words. It’s been this way for a while, now; Lena doesn’t even know when it happened, if it even happened or just slowly evolved on its own. She learns that forgiveness isn’t like a switch-- there’s no _ aha! _ when it occurs to her, no flash of realization that wakes her one day and shifts her over into a new state of being. It’s just there, naturally, slowly, as if Kara had patiently waited for every last trace of grudging hurt to evaporate on its own. And Lena hadn’t even noticed. 

Lena touches her fingertips to the pretty curve of Kara’s cheek and drags down to her jaw, thumb brushing light against the lush edge of her bottom lip. 

She wonders what this moment would be like if she’d chosen differently. If she’d let that horrible abyss consume her, if she’d stuck to her plan and re-coded humanity to be more like HOPE. 

Lena smiles slightly. If anything, HOPE becoming more human should have been her first clue.

Kara hums just under her breath to the tune that echoes around them. Her eyes are closed as they dance, like she’s losing herself in the memory of the music. She’s so serene, so elegant and beautiful in the ruddy sunlight, that Lena takes this stolen moment to memorize every line of Kara’s face limmed in red-gold shine, every wisp of hair, every breathy note that matches the cadence of song drifting through the breeze. 

“I love you, Kara,” Lena tells her. Then she leans forward to kiss her, slow and sweet and reverent, the taste of Kara sending a thrill of heat and starshine into her very bones. 

Kara cups Lena’s face, fingers braced at the curve of her throat as the kiss presses deeper. It’s a trade of touch and breath and small, involuntary moans, their hands wrapped tight around each other, a collision of souls and heat and bright, unwavering love. 

  


Lena watches Supergirl dash off into the clouds, the faintest print of lipstick still smudged on her cheekbone. 

Another day, another villain, another emergency. But Lena embraces it, knowing that Kara will always return-- trusting that Supergirl will win and that Kara will come back into the safety of her arms, where she belongs, and that the precious little heart she’d given back to Kara will stay secure in her care. 

Lena is grateful, every day, to have been saved by hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things 2 laugh at:  
\--the visual of Lena in her apartment making out with air when she tries to kiss virtual Kara  
\--Astra watching them dance over the balcony like ???? wtf???  
\--HOPE is now my headcanon wingwoman for Supercorp

**Author's Note:**

> psst go listen to "Heaven" by PVRIS now, ok


End file.
